Can you imagine a time before we realised that germs spread disease? We didn’t know we needed to wash our hands after going to the toilet or before handling food, that coughing, sneezing, and spitting could transfer infections between people, or that heating or freezing food protected it from contamination. Before the Germ Theory of Disease gained traction, people were genuinely scratching their heads at why they kept getting sick all the time. Noxious miasmas got most of the blame, the bad smells that emanated from the sick, the rotting and raw sewage.
The theory simply states that disease is caused by microorganisms, which are too small to be seen with the naked eye, invading the body and reproducing. These include viruses, fungi, and bacteria. The theory was devised as early as 1546 by Italian physician and scholar Girolamo Fracastoro, who was also known for inventing the word syphilis in a poem entitled “Syphilis or The French Disease”, but it didn’t gain traction until the 1850’s with the work of Louis Pasteur in the late 1850’s, and subsequently Robert Koch in 1880. French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, of course, is famous for inventing pasteurisation, the process of heating a liquid between 60 and 100 degrees. His original test subject was wine, but it soon became applied to beer and milk.
German scientist Robert Koch continued the work of Pasteur, and eventually identified and isolated several species of disease-causing microbes, including anthrax, cholera and typhoid fever. You can thank British surgeon Joseph Lister for sterile hospitals – he was the pioneer of antiseptic surgery, and his work made operations, and the treatment of wounds, safer for everyone. Perhaps that’s the real reason for the UK’s record low on sick days this year.